Farmer Mississippi in the Morning

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 979-8-26926502-5
Verlag: Zmagine
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 236 Seiten

Jess had been happy riding her buckskin mustang until, without warning, time travel reconstructed her personal culture. She had felt there was no need to go beyond the comfortable world she had created for herself. Human relationships were tedious, even her cell phone was optional. Her perspective was altered when she intercepted the time warp and was thrust into the challenges of surviving in antebellum Mississippi.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Farmer, Jane Marie Allen

Weitere Mitwirkende

Allen, Jim

Leseproben

Chapter 1

A chilled breeze brushed across my face and tickled the tiny hairs on my cheeks. August in Mississippi is miserably hot. Even in the last week of August, the presence of cold air anywhere, except in front of an air conditioner, was an impossible incongruity. A shiver shot down my spine, and I clamped my fists on Hitchcock’s reins. Hitchcock wrenched his head to escape the unexpected pressure from the bit.

Liz Townsley’s voice made its way through the cobwebs in my brain and relit the memory of her screaming across the arena, “Jessica! Light touch! Imagine you’re holding a bird in your hand. I told you not to bump that horse’s mouth! Do it again and the lesson is over.”

Head in the air, my normally surefooted buckskin mis-stepped in a divot in the old dirt road, and we lost our balance. That ancient ethereal connection between horse and rider broke. The feeling that I was a cohesive limb of this magnificent beast was snapped. Instinctively, my fingers grasped the mustang’s messy black mane to keep me from slipping off his sweaty back. I instantly regretted that I hadn’t bothered with a saddle. This morning, I had been in such a hurry to engage in the experience of riding that I hadn’t even taken the time to brush Hitchcock.

For me, riding was more than an addiction, it was a basic life function. I had known when I jumped onto Hitchcock without taking the time to change into long pants, that I would be covered with sweat and dirt when I got off. It wasn’t anything a good shower and my lavender scented goat milk soap couldn’t take care of.

This morning, I awoke with an obsessive need to ride, but that wasn’t unusual. When I was still young enough that I hadn’t developed complex relationships and a tangled life, I had been hyper-focused on the strength, the beauty, and the freedom that horses offered. Now a somewhat adult woman, I was not at all apologetic that my girlish hyper focus had evolved into something else, something more intense. It was a soul-deep hunger. On the back of a horse, I felt more than complete.

I had skipped breakfast and headed straight to the barn, hoping to beat the heat. If a Mississippi August morning hadn’t already become sweltering in the pre-dawn, it would quickly become too sultry to do anything outdoors, except swim. Today was already so hot and humid, it felt like I couldn’t sweat. The breeze that had suddenly chilled my face was an anomaly. It had thrown me. It was a break in my perception of reality, completely implausible.

Hitchcock recovered from his stumble, and I asked for a halt to recenter myself. The breeze seemed to have blown up from the narrow, overgrown trail that branched off from the main dirt road. That weedy trail wasn’t long, maybe a mile, a hard-ride mile. I had ridden down there before. It ended at a small clearing in front of a tall limestone outcrop that seemed to have grown out of a low rock ledge. Resting on the ledge was the mouth of a cave. The mouth drooped on the sides like a sad clown. Being somewhat claustrophobic, the thought of crawling into that downturned slit gave me the creeps. But creepiness aside, the truth was that I was curious and really wanted to look into the cave’s darkness. I might have already snooped inside if the opening hadn’t resembled a miserable frown.

“Jess!” My sister’s shout silenced the birds’ singing as she galloped toward us. Contrasting with her delicate figure, her 32-year-old voice could have drowned out a grizzled football coach. If it weren’t for her superb riding skills, Ava would have looked out of place on a woodsy dirt road. Instead, she looked like the elite hunter-jumper equestrienne that she was. In her cream-colored riding breeches, lavender training shirt, black kid gloves, thousand-dollar Parlanti tall boots, and who knows how much Samshield helmet, Ava was always dressed. We had chosen to spend our mother’s money very differently.

I was mildly irked that Ava wasn’t sweating. The only indication that she had been riding through the heat was the white foam that had frothed on Maroon's chest between his front legs, and where his deep bay coat had darkened in wet stripes on the sides of his neck and flank. Ava had ridden him hard, but the horse was in top shape and loved to run. He nickered softly to Hitchcock who stood silently exuding his herd leader confidence. Maroon had been a calculated purchase, a skilled hunter-jumper with a long Irish pedigree. Ava bought him so she could win ribbons. Hitchcock was a mustang rescue. I bought him so I could fill my heart.

“You didn’t take your cell phone.” Ava fished my phone from the zip pocket in her breeches and held it out to me. “I had to guess which trail you took. What if you had fallen?” She was only three years older than me, but since our mother had passed, she delighted in mother-henning me.

“I left my phone on purpose. Sometimes I need to be disconnected.” Since Mom died, I felt that way even more. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself. I didn’t know what I wanted to get out of life, and Ava’s attempts at directing me highlighted my insecurity.

“You’re always disconnected lately.”

“Not always and not enough.” I was trying to be flippant, yet I could tell by Ava’s face, she took it as caustic. The truth was that I was glad that Ava had shown up when she did. The cave at the end of the Rock Wall Trail had unexpectedly lured away my imagination, and my sister brought me back to the present. The cool breeze that had interrupted the summer murk had made me curious. The few times I had previously ridden to the cave clearing, my head had swirled. Stories had flooded my thoughts as I wondered about the cave’s history and why it looked so sad.

“Can we move on?” Ava prodded me. Maroon was dancing, ready to move. “Rolland is going to call and I want to be off this horse when I talk to him. We’re rethinking the fall circuit.”

I glanced at the Rock Wall Trail knowing I would be back. “Sure.”

As we headed back toward the barn, Maroon pranced and jerked on the bit. “Doesn’t that little trail we passed lead to that spooky cave?” Ava asked as she expertly kept Maroon from running amok.

“Yes. I have no idea why Joe forbade us from going into that cave.”

Maroon sashayed to the side and Ava brought him back straight. “Like I said, it’s spooky.”

I stroked Hitchcock’s neck to let him know I was glad he wasn’t being fractious like Maroon. “He was so easy going, except for that one thing. No one was allowed in the cave. I wonder if he left a note explaining why he was so adamant about keeping people out. Now that he’s passed, we’ll never know why, unless we can find something.”

Maroon settled a little, and Ava patted his shoulder. “Like I told you before, I’m not really interested in crawling into that spider incubator, but if you want to see if you can find out if Joe wrote down anything about it, I’ll help you look.”

“I guess. I still feel like I’m violating him or Mom by digging through his stuff,” I said. “I’ve asked around about the cave, but nobody seems to know anything about it other than it’s so dark you can’t see anything inside it.  There’s something about that cave that makes me want to know what’s in there.”

“You shouldn’t be crawling around in a dark cave, especially if it’s impossible to see inside. You could get hurt,” Ava mothered.

The series of events that had landed the cave along with Freestone Hollow Estate in Ava’s and my laps, made me aware that what I perceived as impossibilities were indeed possible. Joe and Mom married when Ava and I were at college in Maryland. Mom met Joe at a conference in Jackson, Mississippi, and never came back to Maryland. Besides weekly meetings on Facetime, the first time we met Joe was at their wedding six weeks later. Joe always seemed a bit odd to me, but I guess that was what intrigued mom. It wasn’t a bad odd, more of a loopy odd. They fit together. Mom had always wanted to move to the south and live in the country, and Joe gave that to her. As a bonus, Ava and I got a place to keep horses. Joe offered to pay our non-resident tuition, so we transferred to State. Reluctantly, we moved to Mississippi and overlooked his idiosyncrasies. Joe and his first wife didn’t have children, so when he died ten years after they married, the estate went to mom. When mom died, Freestone Hollow was Ava’s and mine. By then, to our surprise, Mississippi had grown on us, and we had no intention of selling the estate. Freestone Hollow was our home.

Maroon’s stride relaxed, so Ava let the reins loosen. “Do you think Joe’s closure of the cave had anything to do with superstitions passed down from his Choctaw grandmother?”

“It was his great-great grandmother, but I don’t know about any superstitions. It’s been part of the family property for centuries. They started out with a small stand along the Old Natchez Trace and then expanded eastward.”

“Ah, I remember,” Ava said. “Joe said they had fed and sheltered travelers long before Mississippi gained statehood. They added on to their little stand until they had Freestone Hollow Estate’s 1600 acres.”

“Right. By the time Joe inherited it, he had enough of cattle so he sold the animals and bought his furniture company and made a mint.”

“He was a good man,” Ava said. “Even if we didn’t have him as a stepfather for very long.”

I nodded. “Your horse looks more relaxed. Do you want to go a bit faster?”

“Sure.”

I was fully aware that I was about to break a...